U.S. gastroenterologists to treat hepatitis C patients with telaprevir

Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that U.S. gastroenterologists will treat a larger proportion of treatment nonresponder hepatitis C patients with Vertex/Tibotec/Mitsubishi Tanabe's telaprevir than Merck's boceprevir. U.S. gastroenterologists indicate that they would prescribe telaprevir to 50 percent of their hepatitis C non-responder patients. Telaprevir is forecasted to earn 71 percent patient share in the U.S. hepatitis C non-responder market in 2013.

"According to the majority of interviewed clinicians, telaprevir in combination with peg-interferon-alpha-2a/ribavirin will become the treatment of choice for hepatitis C virus genotype 1-infected patients who previously failed the peg-interferon-alpha/ribavirin treatment. Interviewed and surveyed gastroenterologists are also convinced that interferon-alphas will continue to be the backbone of hepatitis C treatment for the non-responder population for the next five to ten years and that ribavirin will also likely continue to be part of the standard of care," stated Alexandra Makarova, M.D., Ph.D.

The new report entitled Hepatitis C Virus Treatment Non-Responders: Hope on the Horizon with the Imminent Introduction of HCV-Targeted Therapeutics also finds that the combination of telaprevir, Roche's Pegasys and ribavirin will earn Decision Resources' proprietary clinical gold standard status in 2013 for hepatitis C treatment non-responders following its approval for the indication in 2011. This regimen has a significant advantage over the current standard of care regimen (pegylated interferon/ribavirin) in terms of efficacy as well as the potential to shorten treatment in some hepatitis C patients who previously failed pegylated interferon/ribavirin treatment.